Lauren Bacall
Lauren Bacall
Lauren Bacallwas an American actress known for her distinctive voice and sultry looks. She was named the 20th greatest female star of Classic Hollywood cinema by the American Film Institute, and received an Academy Honorary Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2009, "in recognition of her central place in the Golden Age of motion pictures."...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMovie Actress
Date of Birth16 September 1924
CityBronx, NY
CountryUnited States of America
I don't look in the mirror; don't like what I see; never have. I am not my idea of a beauty. Never was. This is not false modesty. I've just never been enamoured of my face, which of course is magnified umpteen times on screen.
There were times, sure, I wanted my career to go better. But once it starts to go downhill, you can never get back, or only to some degree.
You learn to rise above a lot of bad things that happen in your life. And you have to keep going.
I was this kid, and I was scared to death of all these pros around me... My head would shake, and my hands would shake, and I discovered if I kept my head down and looked up, my head would not shake, so I started to do that when I could, when it was appropriate in a scene.
You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow.
Movies are great fun and wonderful when they're good. But you never get to see them till six months after they're finished. So you never get a sense of whether they're really well liked or how good they are. And you don't really know what the finished product is going to be like, because it's a director's medium.
I'm not tough, and I never have been. I suppose over the years I've built up kind of a veneer to protect myself because I have functioned on my own for a long, long time, and I have never had a lot of flunkies preceding me to clear the way.
I wasn't brought up as a society girl to go to balls and be a debutante and marry the social set and money and go to parties. No one in my family lived like that. And I never wanted to live like that. I was brought up to believe in work. I always wanted a career. Always.
You can't acquire a voice. Either you have it, or you don't.
Film is not a woman's medium. If you weren't the hottest kid in town, men stayed away from you.
My definition of a star is someone who really lasts for a very long time.
I always wanted to work with Spencer Tracy, which never happened, although I knew him well. And I never worked with Cary Grant.
I was always a little unsteady in my self-belief. Then there was the Jewish thing. I love being Jewish, I have no problem with it at all. But it did become like a scar, with all these people saying you don't look it.
Stupidity is not my favourite thing; I cannot deal with it.